“What did you say, Steve?” Randy was confused.
“Nothing. I was talking to my mother.”
“You wear a hat?” Mama asked the girl.
“No.” She stared at her, bewildered.
“Naturally. Why should you wear a hat when you don’t even wear a bra and panties, we wouldn’t even mention a nightgown.”
“Well, even if I wore a hat, I wouldn’t wear it to bed.” She was getting irritated again. I could sympathize. My mother can have that effect. But the girl’s curiosity got the better of her. “What do you want a hat for?” she asked.
“I don’t want a hat.” My mother shrugged. “Who said I wanted a hat?”
“. . . and in this situation you’re the only one who can help me,” Randy was saying. “I can’t go into the details, but with your specialized background . . .”
“Well, you asked me for one.” The girl squirmed, trying to cover herself with the sheet.
“Not the hat. The hatpin to hold the hat. That’s What I need. A hatpin and a match.”
“I have a match.” The girl groped on the night table.
“You’re ticking my armpits.” I giggled uncontrollably.
“Steve, this is no laughing matter!” Randy sounded hurt. “If you don’t want to . . .”
“I’m sorry. I do,” I assured him. “Anything. I owe you my life.”
“So what good’s the match without the hatpin?”
Mama’s logic poured ice water over the girl’s attempt to make friends.
“Why does she want the hatpin?” the girl asked me.
“I’ve got ears. You want to know, ask me!” Mama’s eyes shot fire.
“All right. What do you want with a hatpin?”
“Are you listening to me, Steve?” Randy was asking.
“Absolutely,” I assured him. “I owe you my life.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that and pay attention. Now I want you to hop on the first plane to Miami and . . .”
“I need the hatpin to lance the boil on his heinie, it shouldn’t get infected with lockjaw on the tookus,” Mama explained haughtily.
“No!” Mama’s words took me back twenty years to an adolescence spent between viselike fingers squeezing blackheads with the religious fervor of a Holy Roller high on hashish. “Don’t touch me!”
“Steve? Steve? Is something the matter, old buddy?”
Now Randy was becoming alarmed.
“I want to watch.” The girl was smiling sadistically. It must be something in the female hormones.
“It wouldn’t hurt but a minute only I don’t have a hatpin,” my mother assured me. “You’ve got maybe an icepick in your kitchen, Stevie?”
“NO!”
“Yes he does. In the second drawer.” The girl didn’t know it, but she’d just murdered our romance in the bud. If there’s one thing I don’t dig in the sack, it’s a female Benedict Arnold.
“I’ll be right back.” My mother headed for the kitchen.
“You’ve got bad breath!” I growled at the girl vindictively.
“You’re no rose yourself,” Randy answered. “But where I come from your best friend won’t tell you a thing like that. And I’d like to keep it that way.”
“I didn’t mean you. I’m talking to someone else. Look, Randy, I’ve got this emergency situation here. Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. We can go into the details later.”
“All right. Hop on the first plane to Miami. When you get there, call this number. It’s my helicopter pilot. He’ll pick: you up right at the airport and fly you down to my place on the Keys. Okay?”
He repeated the number and I jotted it down. “Okay,” I agreed.
“Make it fast, will you, Steve? I really need your help.”
“Check.” I hung up the phone. The girl was climbing out of bed. “Where are you going?” I asked her.
“I want to be where I can see,” she told me.
“What do you mean, ‘see’? You don’t think I’m going to let—”
“Now roll over on your stomach and lie flat.” Mama was back.
“I won’t.”
“Such a baby!” Mama rolled her eyes at the girl.
“He’s a big coward.” The girl’s eyes glittered with anticipation.
“Not my son!” Mama rushed to my defense. “He doesn’t have a cowardly bone in his whole body. He’s just high-strung is all. Come on now, Stevie, be a good boy,” she crooned. The icepick glittered in her hand. The point turned red as she held a lit match to it.
“I haven’t got time. I have to leave for Miami,” I told her.
“Miami?” Mama was distracted by the news. “You’re going to Miami? Such a coincidence! That’s what I came up to tell you in the first place. For next week I’ve got plane reservations to go down and stay with Mrs. Schwartz, you remember, the Mah-Jongg lady with the blonde hair—black roots-—she always loses. So now you’re going down, we could go together, what could be nicer?”
“Mama, I don’t want you to change your plans because of me.”
“So what’s the matter, you’re ashamed you should fly on the same plane with your mother?”
“Of course not. It’s just-—-”
“Then I’ll go make the reservations for both of us from this nice lady with the Come-On-Down Travel Agency, she’s a cousin from Mrs. Levine.”
“All right.” I resigned myself. “Get us out on the first available flight.”
“Such a hurry? I couldn’t even pack my mouton stole? You keep rushing around like this making your heart swell, next thing I’ll be saying kaddish for you.”
“But Mama,” I reminded her again as she went out the door, “you’re not Jewish.”
“With a dead son, it couldn’t hurt,” she called back. The door slammed behind her.
“Your mother isn’t Jewish,” the girl mused after Mama was gone.
“That’s right.”
“Then that means you’re not Jewish either?” Her voice went up a couple of notes.
“I guess not.”
“Oy! Vey!” she exclaimed. “What have I done?”
“What’s the matter?” I stared at her.
“I thought you were Jewish. I never would have come here with you if I’d known you weren’t. I never would have—” She collapsed in a river of sobs.
“What difference does it make?”
“How—how-—how—” she gulped. “How can I marry you if you’re not Jewish?”
“Who said anything about marriage? I don’t even know your name.”
“You didn’t ask! It’s Rebecca. Rebecca Liebermann. And I can’t marry a man who isn’t Jewish. My father would never talk to me again.”
“I don’t get it. What’s all this about marriage?”
“I thought you were Jewish. You see, I have this girl friend met a Jewish boy at a dance and went to his apartment and made love, and when he found out she was Jewish too, he said the only decent thing they could do was get married and so they did. And I thought if I did the same thing—-” The sobs took over again.
“I'm sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say.
Suddenly anger replaced her tears. “Well next time ask a girl’s name and tell her you’re a goy! It’s the least you could do! Common courtesy . . .” There was a lot more. As it came out, she picked up her clothes and got dressed.
“This is absolutely the last time I ever come down to the Village alone!” she snarled at me over her shoulder. The door slammed behind her.
Maybe I should have told her I’d convert, I thought to myself as I showered, shaved, and dressed. I was just buttoning my shirt when Mama called to tell me what flight we were on. Two hours later I met her at La Guardia Airport. Forty minutes after that we were in the air, Miami-bound.
The “No Smoking” light went out, and we unhooked our seat belts. “You can open your eyes now,” I told Mama as I fumbled in my pocket for a cigarette.